Families are planning to battle on in their bid to stop a giant soft drinks company from building its national distribution centre near their homes.

Councillors hoped that a truce could be reached between the warring sides when Princes Soft Drinks agreed to go back to the drawing board to try to move the development further away from houses in the Cross Lane area.

The depot and business park in which it would stand off the Drighlington bypass are expected to bring 850 new jobs to the district. Bradford Congress - made up of the district's leading organisations - is supporting the huge job creation scheme. And councillors welcome the jobs boost, but say they do not want families to suffer.

But today residents in the Westgate Hill area were back on the warpath planning future action to stop the development.

Princes will come back to next Thursday's planning committee meeting in City Hall reporting that it has looked at four options - and only its original proposal is viable.

But the company now proposes to lower the roof of the development by one metre - giving a total maximum building height of 25 metres. The company says it is also prepared to improve the appearance of the building with additional glazing and masonry.

But the families will hold a public meeting at 7.30pm next Thursday at St Paul's Church Hall, Birkenshaw, to discuss their continuing protest.

Resident Gordon Tobswell said: "The new proposals are not good enough. They haven't looked at the option which is the only one for us - and that is not building it at all. We do not want it there."

The residents have told the Council they are concerned about noise and disturbance from the building and believe extra traffic will create road dangers in the area. English Heritage has also stepped into the row because it believes part of the site may be near land on which the Battle of Adwalton Moor was fought in 1643 during the English Civil War. The conservation organisation says part of the site could become a major heritage tourism asset.

The Council has been swamped with more than 600 individual letters of objection. It attracted the second highest number of individual letters received to any planning application. It was beaten only by proposals for a bail hostel in Bradford which drew 1,000 letters two years ago.

The company says residents will not be bothered by noise and nuisance. It does not expect serious problems from extra traffic.

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